This article aims to explore perceptions of learning outcomes, central professional competence, and the profession among students graduating from the higher education programme in career guidance and counselling in Sweden. The empirical data consists of semi-structured interviews with 22 students graduating in career guidance and counselling. The students consider individual career guidance counselling to constitute the heartland of the professional practice and emphasise practical competence, or know-how, learned in courses in conversation methodology and workplace learning. They find that the substance, or know-what, of career guidance counselling, such as knowledge of education systems and the labour market, needs to be learned in professional practice as it is specific to the organisation and workplace. They argue that their profession has a low status in society and that career guidance counsellors are expected to display professionalism and establish a basis for trust and legitimacy in the workplace.

Vocational teachers have a key role in the professional growth of vocational students, making their competence an important factor in the quality of VET. This study explores how principals and vocational teachers identify important and achieved competencies in relation to vocational teachers’ work. The data was collected through an online questionnaire, centred in two types of competence, competence important for teachers (important competence) and competence they consider they have already developed (achieved competence). For each type, a set of 27 competencies was evaluated on a Likert-scale by 370 participants, including both teachers and principals. The statistical analysis was primarily descriptive. The findings indicated that good communication with students, assessment of students’ knowledge, skills and abilities, and creating conditions for learning, are the three most important and achieved competencies in VET teachers’ work. On the contrary, previous teaching experience, working experience with adults and migrants, and the competence related to recruitment of students and marketing of the school, were seen as the least important and achieved ones. Different actors, meaning principals and teachers, reached an agreement on these findings. Future research should look into the reasons behind the selection of specific competence as important and the processes of competence development.      

The aim of this article is to describe and discuss professionalism and professionalisation of career guidance counselling in Sweden in relation to different logics of professional practice. The transformation of the labour market and the educational system in Sweden over the past decades has led to an increase in the importance of individual educational and occupational choices and development of career management skills in relation to individual trajectories based on personal interests. Also, individual agency has increased in importance in relation to the quantitative planning of secondary and tertiary education aiming to match supply and demand in the labour market. Within the dominant functionalistic technical-instrumental paradigm, which focus on individual agency and rational choices, the importance of career guidance and counselling has increasingly come into focus. Through the incorporation of market-oriented management logics in the welfare sector, the previously dominant logics of professional responsibility have in many professional groups been replaced by professional accountability. In Sweden, the process of professionalising the emerging semi-profession of career guidance and counselling is driven by policymakers. Rather than being defined by practising professionals, professionalism is externally defined in reports and policy documents shaped by elites and experts, outlining core competences in career guidance and counselling related to political objectives. The practice of career guidance and counselling is not strongly governed and there is little external evaluation. The professionals have autonomy and relatively high degrees of freedom in formulating problems and solutions, but little organisational support. 

Syftet med denna artikel är att diskutera professionalism och professionalisering av studie- och yrkesvägledning i Sverige i relation till olika logiker för organisering av professionellt arbete. Arbetsmarknaden och utbildningsystemen i Sverige har genomgått betydande strukturella förändringar under de senaste decennierna, vilka har medfört att betydelsen av individuella studie- och yrkesval samt utvecklingen av karriärkompetens har ökat, i relation till såväl individens livsbanor som matchningen mellan utbud och efterfrågan på arbetsmarknaden. Inom det dominerande funktionalistiska och tekniskt rationella paradigmet betonas betydelsen av individuella val samt studie- och yrkesvägledning. Med införandet av marknadslogik i välfärdssektorn har den tidigare dominerande logiken, vilken var baserad på yrkesprofessionalism och professionellt ansvar, i många professionella grupper ersatts av organisationsprofessionalism och redovisningsskyldighet. I Sverige har studie- och yrkesvägledningens professionalisering i första hand drivits på från den politiska arenan. Professionalismen har utformats av expertis i policydokument, där den professionella kompetensen har definierats utifrån politiska mål. Den centrala styrningen och externa utvärderingen av studie- och yrkesvägledningen är dock begränsad. Studie- och yrkesvägledare har relativt stora frihet att formulera problem och identifiera lösningar i den professionella praktiken, men de har svagt stöd inom organisationen.

The world of work in Sweden and other OECD countries has undergone major structural changes in recent decades. There has been a shift from a commodity-based industrial society to a knowledge-based economy (noted decades ago) driven by technological innovation, increased demands for efficiency and productivity, new ways of organising work and increased international competition. The labour market structure varies between different countries. In Europe there has been a polarisation over the past several years, with increasing numbers of top-paying and low-paying jobs, and slower growth in the middle due mainly to a loss of jobs in manufacturing and construction. There has been a shift in the labour market, in for example Sweden, that will become even more prominent in the coming decades when an increasing number of people will be working in the service sector (both private and public, predominantly the latter) and fewer in industry or agriculture and forestry. The most resilient jobs are in knowledge-intensive services in both the private and the public sector, such as health and education. Jobs are being upgraded and in Europe increasingly require longer periods of study. This development is prominent in Sweden, where workers report experiences of reorganisation or structural changes and the introduction of new technology in the workplace to a greater extent than in most other European countries (Eurofound 2015).